Mission Accomplished: Osama bin Laden Dead!

Still waiting for President Obama to speak, but sources tell me that the CIA tracked down Osama bin Laden’s location via his iPhone. Happy “Spring Offensive,” Taliban!

Consider this a Dance on bin Laden’s Grave open thread.

UPDATE: Not a Predator attack, not renal failure, but a US Special Operations mission (Navy Seals), eight months in the making. Meanwhile, let’s all take a moment to remember the immortal words of former President George W. Bush:

“So I don’t know where he is. You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.” — 03/13/2002

For decades Republicans have tried to sell themselves as the pro-military, pro-defense, “America First” party. The truth is they’re bungling incompetents who can’t do anything right. 9/11 happened because they ignored warnings and were sleeping on the job. (If air traffic controllers get fired for that, why shouldn’t presidents and political parties get fired for that, too?) The TRUTH is it took a Democratic administration to get the job done. And a Democratic president DID get the job done. The lesson here is clear: If you want something done right you have to hire a Democrat to do it. Because Republicans can’t do anything right. And don’t kid yourself, GOPers are NOT pro-military — don’t forget, they tried to CUT combat pay and dumped our wounded warriors into moldy barracks to rot while waiting for underfunded medical care. Don’t kid yourself, Republicans aren’t pro-America, they’re pro-themselves and to hell with everyone else.

I’m sorry to be so partisan about this, but it was Republicans who politicized absolutely everything in our country, and this is as good a time as any to hold them accountable for their repeated and egregious failures.

Remember, the FBI stated that there was zero, that’s right, zilch proof that he was involved in 9/11. The chimp even had to admit that.

There are millions of wing nuts and wing nut sites that have stated for years that he was dead already, and being kept alive in the collective consciousness as a mind control mechanism. Bummer for them. They’ll have to adjust their tin foil.

17, 20 — It’s not quite that simple, but OBL’s death certainly should lead to a review of where U.S. Afghanistan policy goes from here. It’s really debatable whether it’s our responsibility to save the Afghan people from the Taliban or engage in nation-building there. But OBL’s death doesn’t necessarily finish off Al Qaeda and we went into Afghanistan in the first place to keep A.Q. from using that country for training bases and safe haven. A status review is in order, but I can’t sign on for a precipitate withdrawal.

On the news, they are showing a celebratory crowd outside the White House. Although this is not quite V-J Day, as the fight will probably still continue, but then again, there were Japanese soldiers hiding and doing sabotage on some islands in the Pacific, including in the Phillipines for decades after V-J Day.

For the ignoranti just tuning in, the U.S. government received a tip from Pakistani government sources about bin Laden’s possible whereabouts in August 2010, and U.S. intelligence sources then worked that lead and located him by following two couriers to the compound.

Ah, the squirming of the right wingers is delightful. They are so torn — TORN!!!!1! — between their blood lust for Osama and their racist urges against Obama. President Adult, not President Codpiece, caught the bad guy. Poor, poor wingnuts.

@43 That’s about what we expected from you and your ilk, putz. Eat shit, buddy, I know it’s tough to live down the fact your monkeyboy didn’t get him, and even tougher for you that our guy did get him.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is putting U.S. embassies on alert and is warning Americans abroad of possible reprisal attacks from al-Qaida and its affiliates around the world after the killing of the group’s leader Osama bin Laden by American forces in Pakistan.

In a worldwide travel alert released shortly after President Barack Obama late Sunday announced bin Laden’s death in a military operation, the department said there was an “enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counterterrorism activity in Pakistan.” It said Americans living or traveling abroad, particularly in areas that have been hit by anti-American violence in the past should limit travel outside their homes and avoid large gatherings.

The alert said U.S. embassy operations would continue “to the extent possible under the constraints of any evolving security situation.”

@52 If memory serves me, Roger has a niece that served in Iraq. Hope she came through it OK. I’ve got a couple of buddies that have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ve been to Afghanistan a couple of times. While I don’t know anyone that was killed when the towers came down, a friend of mines sister had a close shave of it and was MIA for a day. I remember very well the phone conversation I has with his mom on that day. I know a few people that lost friends and family on 9/11. I know people that lost friends and family in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve all been though this. We’ve all helped people along the way. Not just you. Not just Republicans or conservatives. We’ve all been though this.

Some presidents are better than others. Some talk, some do the walk. As a lawyer, I would have preferred that Osama BL had been captured, tried in a court of law with due process provided him, and then, presumably, sentenced. In the real world, however, I recognize that

It has been nearly 10 years since bin Laden and his crew wreaked murderous terror on the USA and the world. In the intervening years many thousands of our neighbors here in the Pacific Northwest served and fought the wars which resulted. Far too many of those men and women are no longer with us, and more importantly, are no longer with their families.

While we should be proud that we finally, at last, took out the mouthpiece SOB, let us not forget the sacrifice many have had to make to obtain this victory.

And yes, let us also be thankful we have a Commander In Chief who was able to avoid the many distractions thrown his way yet was able to assemble the leadership talent to bring this bloody chapter to its rightful closure.

The conversation this morning centered around how no one alerted the NY Times so Osama could escape. Knowing there was no cell phone or internet coverage at his hideout lets you know the NY Times coverage of past events was effective in Pakistan. My two college classmate families are tearfully joyful over his death.

The president spent part of his Sunday on the golf course, but cut his round short to return to the White House for a meeting where he and top national security aides reviewed final preparations for the raid.

KING: … and commander in chief of the military. So I want to give you a chance, because many people will say, Vice President Cheney just said Barack Obama, President Obama is making us less safe, more at risk, which you just said. I want to give you a chance — and take as much time as you want — to prove it. Because you put that list up there, and I know you say there have been three cases, I believe, of waterboarding in the past, and you say that specific things have been prevented. I know some of this is classified intelligence, but now that you’re out of government, to the degree that you can, tell the American people, because of those tactics, because of those, yes, sometimes extreme tactics, we stopped this.

CHENEY: Well, I would say that the key to what we did was to collect intelligence against the enemy. That’s what the terrorist surveillance program was all about, that’s what the enhanced interrogation program was all about.

KING: But another 9/11, because of a tactic like waterboarding or a black site, can you say with certainty you stopped another attempt to do something on that level?

CHENEY: John, I’ve seen a report that was written based upon the intelligence that we collected then that itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs. It’s still classified. I can’t give you the details of it without violating classification, but I can say there were a great many of them. The one that has been public was the potential attack coming out of Heathrow, when they were going to have several American planes with terrorists on board, with liquid explosives, and they were going to blow those planes up over the United States.

Now, that was intercepted and stopped, partly because of those programs that we put in place.

Now, I think part of the difficulty here as I look at what the Obama administration is doing, we made a decision after 9/11 that I think was crucial. We said this is a war. It’s not a law enforcement problem. Up until 9/11, it was treated as a law enforcement problem. You go find the bad guy, put him on trial, put him in jail. The FBI would go to Oklahoma City and find the identification tag off the truck and go find the guy that rented the truck and put him in jail.

Once you go into a wartime situation and it’s a strategic threat, then you use all of your assets to go after the enemy. You go after the state sponsors of terror, places where they’ve got sanctuary. You use your intelligence resources, your military resources, your financial resources, everything you can in order to shut down that terrorist threat against you.

When you go back to the law enforcement mode, which I sense is what they’re doing, closing Guantanamo and so forth, that they are very much giving up that center of attention and focus that’s required, and that concept of military threat that is essential if you’re going to successfully defend the nation against further attacks.

Breitbart Glen Beck JOKIII the miserable idiot he voted for twice the idiot’s puppet master Darth Cheney All the other morons on Faux News The pajamas media morons Michelle Malkin and her stupid hot air

The conversation this morning centered around how no one alerted the NY Times so Osama could escape. Knowing there was no cell phone or internet coverage at his hideout lets you know the NY Times coverage of past events was effective in Pakistan. My two college classmate families are tearfully joyful over his death.

Get over it Pud. First of all, no president took more “vacation” time then Bush. Second, if a major operation was pending, the BEST thing for the President to do would be to maintain a sense of normalcy. And finally, let’s judge by results. You’ve been wallowing in the mud here. Let it go.

Barack Obama declares, “The death of Osama Bin Laden is entirely the fault of George W. Bush.” Bin Laden’s body to lie in state in capitol rotunda after state funeral. Entire democratic congress expected to pay respects.

@102 I think you’re confused. Gadaffi is our buddy. Heck, John McCain had a meeting with Gaddafi JUST a few months ago to talk about how great our relationship was with Gadaffi, and how much the U.S. was going to help and support him. This was years AFTER the ‘terrorist’ attacks (re: Lockerbie), so it’s not like McCain didn’t know who he was or what he had done, and McCain didn’t try to arrest him or call him a monster, he just shook his hand and told him the U.S. had his back. Damn that video!

I’m very pleased we got the bastard and killed him. One more down and many more to go. We need to continue down the line with #2 et al until their leadership is wiped out. Bin Laden is a very symbolic kill and will help Obama politically. The problem now is possible retaliation. If these animals retaliate on our soil, Obama will go from hero to zero as in the end, Americans want to feel safe at home much more than bringing justice for 9/11. Now is the test of how safe is America and Americans abroad?? I hope the answer is very! Job well done. Now what?

For the most part, Americans are putting aside their ideological differences and celebrating the victory over Osama Bin Laden. Just as we put aside our partisonship to join together in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and our commitment to Afganistan in 2001 and 2002.

But we did see how the Republican noise machine attempted to turn that non-partison patriotism into a partison advantage. I was one of the firt to put a yellow ribbon on my car to support our troops in Afganistan. Not the magentic ones which went on sale later, but a real ribbon tied to both side-view mirrors. I remember with regret about a year later when I took them off as the Bush administration had turned such symbols into symbols of support for the Republican agenda.

One war to capture Osama Bin Laden turned into two wars, the second one having absolutely nothing to do with Al Quida, despite the Bush administration’s claims to the contrary at the time. Over time, we have learned that very little that came out from the Bush administration was the truth. And don’t forget the undated videos of Osama Bin Laden which conveniently hit the news the day of Bush’s debate with Kerry in 2004. Either the Bush administration was releasing older videos timed as an “October surprise”, or Bin Laden was making sure Bush was re-elected, because he was Al Quida’s best recruiting advantage in the Muslim world.

And don’t forget that right after Obama’s election, the right-wing nuts announced that America was going to be hit by a wave of terrorist attacks because Obama was President. Since then, we have been deluged by continued and nonsensical claims about President Obama’s place of birth, wild accusations about his academic credentials, attempts to blame him for the “great rescession” which clearly started while Bush was still President, criticism of TARP plans which were Bush’s proposals and signed by Bush, and attempts to blame Obama for the annual budget deficit of which some 1.2 trillion were already incured during the Bush administration, and only a (relatively) small amount more made by President Obama’s attempts to put out the fire caused by Bush’s rescession.

So I’m not too worried if the Democrats take a moment to congratuate Obama for this victory, and note that Bush couldn’t capture him in almost eight years. After all, the right-wing reaction is entirely predictable, and has already occured: Fox News includes a parade of Republicans giving all the credit to Bush, and none to Obama, etc., others criticising “why it took Obama so long to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden”, etc.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney toasted President Obama, saying the Democratic president deserves credit, along with members of the military and intelligence communities, for the killing of Osama bin Laden.

I think we need to be very, very careful getting too carried away with celebrations and rhetoric. Bin Laden needed to be killed and I’m very glad and grateful he is dead. But I suspect some of the over-the-top celebrations may fuel ugly retaliation. They will likely do it, celebrate or not, but it makes us look a bit foolish and underestimating the power of these terrorists. Plus a significant retaliation, especially on our soil, will make President Obama a huge target for blame. He should get credit as Commander in Chief. That’s his job. But too much politics and celebration will make the President vulnerable for heaps of blame. How can you take heaps of credit for killing Bin Laden…and try to escape all blame for retaliation?? Think about it. The Internet is ablaze fueling retaliation.

With the announcement of Osama Bin Laden’s death last night, President Obama secured a decade-long goal in eliminating a mass murderer and global terrorist. While his leadership behind the accomplishment has spurred many to push past partisan politics, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough managed to conjure up a division. In going after bin Laden, Obama not only defied his “base,” he defied his own “ideological leanings”:

Bush was right to treat Osama bin Laden as insignificant, but wrong to create the GWoT. He should have treated these people as lucky losers who would get the pointy end of our stick one of these days and tried to address the problems of injustice in the Middle East.

Instead of following through on treating ObL as an insignificant twerp, Bush was party to a policy that elevated ObL.

I thought the President’s speech last night was too long. He should have come out and said that “we sought to take ObL into custody but he was killed in the ensuing firefight.” and let it go at that.

The kind of assholes who would see pregnant teenage rape victims living under bridges or in labor camps and banned from educating themselves. The kind of people who would see this nation divided up into privately owned fiefdoms and kingdoms with no laws applying to the Kings and Robber princes. The kind of people who would love to see the black folks back in chains and being worked to death. The kind of folks who want totalitarian police states like Argentina in the 1980’s. The kind of people who would see Old Testament laws being enforced by private companies for profit.

They are Fascists. There is no other political ideology that applies to their belief system. They are the same sort of folks who ran Ireland for 400 years.

“But the guys who deserve the credit and did the heavy lifting (getting Bi Laden) are the ones who put on the uniform. (Dramatic pause) And they’re not demanding lifetime pensions or medical care.” Rush Limbaugh, five minutes ago.

Uhhhh…These particular guys are career military. They get VA care for life, a lifetime pension AND things like USAA discount insurance, home loans, college tuition et al. And they deserve it.

Dear Rush, on behalf of every military family whose benefits it appears you want to eliminate, decent Americans, and me personally, GO FUCK YOURSELF!

More details are becoming available. But it appears that the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, is also the site of a Pakistani military acadamy, and barracks for three regiments of teh Pakistani army (in general, just about a Brigade, but I don’t know how the Pakistani army organizes it’s army).

A Pakistani living in Abbottabad live-tweeted about the raid, he was awakened by the noise of helecopters at 1:00 a.m., then gunfire and explosions and “firing from the air”. He believed that a helicopter crashed, or was shot down.

I’m still wondering how U.S. helicopters got into Abbotabad. It’s some 250 miles or so from the Afgan border (by my rough estimate), and about 300 miles from Jalalabad. These weren’t stealth aircraft, so taking choppers in that far without Pakistani permission is a pretty incredible undertaking. I’m wondering if we will ever know how they did that. Also, conducting a raid in a small city/town with a military acadamy and three army regiments within a few minutes of the raid site – without getting Pakistani permission in advance – is pretty balsy.

Some articles are saying that Obama rejected a B-2 Stealth bomber mission to take out the site because it would have prevented us from confirming Obama’s death, and it would have destroyed intelligence info we could acquire from that site. That’s a pretty good call – remember all the times Saddam Hussein was deemed killed in a bomb attack, only to have him pop up again later?

Steve & Michael, having been permanently banned (yeah, i can get around it, but why?) at (un)SP for mocking the ignorance or blatant propaganda that most of their front pagers spew, I hope pudge’s pooh parade stays up uncorrected for all eternity.

It is his finest work in ignorant knee jerk, racially tinged 2nd rate commentary; his monument.

# 123: “…I’m now hearing from sources that they’ve been hearing that some liberals…”

In other words, wingnuts are making stuff up (nothing new about that), and you just swallow it hook, line, and sinker, if it matches with what you want to believe.

Those are probably the same sources that said that Bin Laden was killed over a week ago, as Pudge was reporting.

Hint: If you turn off Fox News and the right-wing blogs and radio shows, your intelligence level tends to rise considerbly, although it may take a few months for the effects to get out of your system and rationality to take hold.

Maybe this is a good time to shut down the wars going on in Afghanistan and Iraq and withdraw from the Middle East. The only reason we have problems with terrorists is that we’re eyeball-deep into their affairs.

Maybe I’m slow on keeping up with the story, but the reports now say that Osama Bin Laden’s body was taking to a U.S. warship, and after confirmation of his identity he was buried at sea.

That certainly sounds like the best solution for everyone involved. It conforms to Muslim tradition of burial within 24 hours of death, and leaves not grave site for Al Quida to turn into a memorial and recruiting symbol. I’m assuming that this decision was made prior to the raid.

@124 This has to rank amongst the dumbest fucking blog posts in human history, perhaps even the history of the entire cosmos. Hell, perhaps even in the entire history of the present universe and all universes, be they parallel, before or yet to come.

Q: Was Osama Bin Laden really killed today? A: No.

Q: Could you be more specific? A: He was killed days ago.

Q: Fine. Are we certain it’s him? A: Pretty much: that’s why they waited a week to tell us, so they could be certain.

While he doesn’t do the “street corner loon” thing as well as others, (un)SP’s resident constitutional scholar definitely ranks up there with the dumbest mo’fo’s I’ve ever run across. I swear to God, I used to have a cat that was smarter than Pudge.

Noticing that many conservative commentators are praising “our brave men and women in uniform” and going out of their way not to mention Obama, and even to credit Bush.

The basic fact is that our brave men and women in uniform do diddlysquat until someone sets strategic priorities for them. Obama wanted to get bin Laden, but Cheney and Bush preferred him as a live boogeyman to get popular support for putting two wars on our national credit card.

And one news story said that Bin Laden’s death comes exactly eight years to the day after Bush’s appearance on the USS Lincoln with a “Mission Accomplished” banner, declaring the successful end of major combat operations in Iraq – a war which Bush claimed was necessary to remove the threat of Al Quida and WMD in Iraq.

I watched a show yesterday on one of the history channels called “Terry Jones’ Barbarians.” This particular episode was about Julius Caesar and his invasion to subdue the Celts in Gaul. The archaeologists have come up with the idea that the Romans had obscured the real reason for the invasion and conquering of the Celts. To read the Romans’ account of things, they invaded to prevent one set of barbarians from killing another set. The more recent archaeological evidence, however, is supporting the idea that Julius Caesar invaded Gaul to get his hands on the sources and stocks of gold that the Celts had. It seems that the Celts were quite the miners and gold craftsmen of the time. They had a quite advanced civilization, albeit different from the Roman model.

The invasion by Rome made me think that possibly Bush and Cheney had alternative ideas when we went into Iraq. It really wasn’t about “weapons of mass destruction,” but something else. Well, if Caesar can invade Gaul for the gold and call it “saving one barbarian tribe from another,” I guess it’s possible tor Bush and Cheney to do something similar. History really does repeat itself!!

By the way, is it true that Obama’s announcement of the death of Bin Laden pre-empted the conclusion of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice?

It’s been a tough few days for The Donald. He’s probably sulking and complaining that Obama should have waited until his show was over before announcing Bin Laden’s death. In “The Donald’s” mind, Celibrity Apprentice is clearly more important.

This will do Obama no good whatsoever in next year’s election. The American body politic isn’t stupid, but after decades of the mass media overloading our brains with puerile nonsense we have the collective memory of a goldfish. Eighteen more months of noisy posturing by the John Boehner Marching and Chowder Society, accompanied by well-coordinated, Koch-funded media carpet bombing will assure that we’re all going to be obsessing over something else entirely.

It appears that “The Donald” was on “Fox and Friends” to criticize Obama for not making a serious speach at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.

For anyone who hasn’t heard (and I suspect there are only a few), Trumb was verbally skewered by both the President and comedian Seth Meyers for Trump’s “Birther” campaign.

Of course, Trump knows that the White House Correspondent’s Dinner is a rare break from seriousness in which the President gets to give a humerous speach which routinely mocks not only himself, but the news media and newsmakers.

Now Trump seems to be switching campaign tactics again, trying to get people who are upset over rising gas prices to be angry at Obama over it. I guess when the price of gas falls again, Trump will take credit for that, as well as for the resolution of the Birther issue.

# 138: Agreed. And if Bush, Cheney, and Rove were still running the White House, they would be trying to figure out how to delay this announcement until the summer of 2012.

“Do we wait until then to conduct the raid, or doe we do it now, swear everyone to secrecy, and then pull out the body just before the elections?”

Of course, the wingnuts would say I’m just a conspiracy nut. I still don’t think I am, but I’m a heckuve a lot more suspicious than I once was.

And some eleven years ago, I would have said that the American people would never stand for having the Supreme Court stop a recount and declare a President, that Habeous Corpus would never again be curtailed, that a videotape of a terrorist wouldn’t be withheld by the CIA and released right before a Presidential re-election debate, and that money allocated by Congress for re-construction of a major U.S. city wouldn’t be bottlenecked in the federal administrative process until the population had reached so low it was no longer a factor in the state’s electoral college results.

On un-Sound politics they’re saying that it would be impossible for Navy SEALS to have surrounded Osama undetected because the beach balls balanced on their noses would have been impossible to disguise.

It really doesn’t contain anything most of us haven’t known for quite some time, but it’s nice when the mainstream media has a chance to get a word in edgewise against to counter-balance th Fox Noise Machine with – you know – actual facts.

That’s what I thought too rhp. A long standing practice of the modern military is to reference enemy territory as “Indian Country” and people who are rogue, as “off the reservation.”

It’s appalling to equate a person like Geronimo who resisted invasion and manifest destiny on behalf of his people with a person who is a terrorist. It really sickens me. Per capita, no one enlists in the various branches in higher number for their population than American Indians.

What a great day for the United States of America. Today I’m especially proud to be an American. I am so proud of our President, Military, Intelligence Community and everyone involved who worked tirelessly to track down and kill Bin Laden. We all should be grateful for the sacrifices made to pull this mission off.

Thank you President Obama for taking care of business. Makes me proud to be an American.

@151 Yup! From top to bottom, they all did good. It’s a good day for America thanks to some very steadfast and courageous people.

Imagine Obama cowering the other night at the thought of the responsibility of firing people like his adversary Donald Trump. It drew a laugh. But only Obama knew the real meaning of that joke. He had just authorized that hell be unleashed upon Osama Bin Laden.

@150 A lot of that comes from the Boomer generation having been raised on “cowboys and Indians” movies that stereotyped the “cowboys” as good guys (they weren’t; see, e.g., Sand Creek Massacre) and the “Indians” as bad guys (bad for what? defending themselves?).

@52 My condolences for the loss of your classmates, puddy, and I sincerely mean that, but this comment is relevant to what??!

It certainly doesn’t negate my response @48 about your smarmy comment @43, in fact, it doesn’t even speak to it, which is typical puddy: When you get called out on your bullshit you try to change the subject.

I know Roger. I think it started with Vietnam (the whole Indian country metaphor for US military battles)

Sure takes the wind out of it though when you see that. One Indian I work with is a Silver Star guy from Vietnam. The father of friend was at Guadalcanal in WWII. And let’s not forget the Alaska National Guard out there when everyone thought Alaska was going to get picked off in WWII, not to mention the numbers that were in Gulf 1 and Iraq and now Afghanistan. Nice to know that all the military sees Indian people is for 19th century references.

@17,36 – Afghanistan is a complicated policy issue. We invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban had turned the country into a safe haven and training base for Al Qaeda. We’re still there so it doesn’t revert to that.

There needs to be clarity in our Afghanistan policy. To the extent the administration’s idea is to engage in nation-building, I don’t think Afghanistan is a society amenable to that kind of foreign “help” and we shouldn’t be there for that. It didn’t work for the Soviets and it won’t work for us, either. Afghanistan is what it is, and nobody can change it.

It’s important to keep in mind that Afghanistan is not a country. It’s a geographical area that happens to be inhabited by several dozen tribal and ethnic groups that don’t get along with each other. Due to the rugged topography and lack of communications (only one highway, no railroads), communities are isolated and political/social governance is local, making a strong central government impossible. Afghanistan is, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, run at the household and village level by family and clan chiefs. The whole concept of “nation” is irrelevant in a culture like that.

So, we need to think about why our government is there, what it’s trying to achieve, and whether those goals are realistic. Keeping in mind that what the Afghan people need from the rest of the world is not dictates on how to run their affairs but reconstruction assistance to rebuild the cities, farms, irrigation systems, and agricultural production devastated by 30 years of war.

@164 I don’t have time at this moment to delve into the whole psychology of indoctrinating U.S. Army soldiers and Marines with racist attitudes toward little yellow people in foreign lands to encourage them to commit the unnatural act of killing their fellow human beings; suffice to say that when I was in Vietnam absolutely everyone was in the habit of calling the territory outside the base perimeter “Indian country.” But worse stuff than that went on among the troops. I remember sitting on a bunker arguing with some of my buddies over whether Vietcong trying to surrender with their hands in the air should be taken captive or gunned down. It was about a 50-50 split.

The stream of information that led to Sunday’s raid began over four years ago, when U.S. intelligence personnel were alerted about two couriers who were working with al Qaeda and had deep connections to top al Qaeda officials. Prisoners in U.S. custody flagged these two couriers as individuals who might have been helping bin Laden, one official said

Thank you GWBush and Richard Cheney for laying the groundwork for Obama to continue to use. Again…

“Detainees also identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by bin Laden,” the official said. The U.S. intelligence community uncovered the identity of this courier four years ago, and two years ago, the U.S. discovered the area of Pakistan this courier and his brother were working in.

Thank you GWBush and Richard Cheney for laying the groundwork.

Now leftist pinheads… if it comes out the actionable intelligence came through waterboarding in these rendering zones, how can you cheer this? For all the waterboarding references contact the HA databaze fool who looks like a pink-haired troll. One of the couriers was Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s personal bud and Khalid also gave him up.

Now onto FiredogLake so there is no question… since many HA leftist pinheads love to use FDL…

The reference to Abu Faraj al-Libi is notable in this context for two reasons. He was one of the last High Value Detainees picked up. The Red Cross dates his capture to May 2, 2005 (though he appears to have been held in joint Pakistani-US custody for a time and his Detainee Assessment Brief says he was transferred to US custody on June 6, 2005), and of the HVDs moved to Gitmo in September 2006, he was the last to be picked up.

More interesting, though, are some details from his DAB. In 2003, OBL assigned al-Libi to be “the official messenger” between himself and others in Pakistan. And, apparently at that point, al-Libi moved with his family to Abbottabad, the city where OBL was found.

So if this guy gave up the couriers through GWBush approved waterboarding what say the HA pinheads now?

So now we see the Pakistani ISID was tipping off Osama each time Bush was getting closer and closer. Since we now know Osama was just down the street from the Pakistani “West Point”. it was the leftist pinheads such as yourselves who claimed we had to observe the Pakistani national sovereignty and tell them we’re coming in to look for Osama and then the ISID would warn him. So Bush could never get closer and I have to credit Obama for not listening to leftist pinheads like the fools here. Truth hurts doesn’t it.

And we have to thank the NY Times who told the world of the warrantless search program and how we were tracking overseas phone calls and money transfers. We now see Osama was basically incommunicado.

See ya simpletons. Remember Obama condemned this waterboarding practice and the irony of Obama cheerleading the use of rendering techniques Obama ran against in 2008.

Firedoglake (abbreviated FDL) is a US collaborative blog which primarily specialises in covering news from a left-progressive/left-liberal stance. Established by film producer Jane Hamsher in 2004, Firedoglake has served as a platform for Hamsher, other writers and commenters to engage in debate and activism.

Direct from WikiPedia!

So no you’re saying your monkey’s hands were tied by the “libruls” and teh evil MSM…

Bush is not a monkey, but you are a gorilla. Yes. Go look it up moron!

The AP has confirmed that intelligence leading to the courier that in turn led to Osama bin Laden came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and–as I surmised earlier–Abu Faraj al-Libi while in CIA custody. But partly because of the language AP uses to describe this–and partly because the wingnuts love torture–many are drawing the wrong conclusion about it. Here’s what the AP says:

Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

Note what AP says: KSM provided the courier’s nom de guerre. The CIA got similar information from al-Libi. And they were tortured. The AP does not say torture led to this information.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) closed the unit charged with catching Osama bin Laden and his senior deputies, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Established in 1996 and known as “Alec Station,” the unit was dismantled at the end of 2005 and its employees reassigned in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center; however, its dissolution was publicly announced only recently.

The decision was a milestone for the agency and indicates a significant change in perspective regarding bin Laden’s place in Al Qaida in particular and in the international terrorist infrastructure in general.

Whereas the belief until now was that Al Qaida was a purely hierarchical organization and that killing off its leader would put an end to its activity, the new reality required the agency to change its assumptions.

Senior CIA members emphasized that catching bin Laden is still a priority, and that closing the unit does not signify the total neglect of that goal.

“The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever,” said CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck. “This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus.”

I think I’ll end this with:

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.” – G.W. Bush, 9/13/01

“I want justice…There’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive,'” – G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI

“…Secondly, he is not escaping us. This is a guy, who, three months ago, was in control of a county [sic]. Now he’s maybe in control of a cave. He’s on the run. Listen, a while ago I said to the American people, our objective is more than bin Laden. But one of the things for certain is we’re going to get him running and keep him running, and bring him to justice. And that’s what’s happening. He’s on the run, if he’s running at all. So we don’t know whether he’s in cave with the door shut, or a cave with the door open — we just don’t know….” – Bush, in remarks in a Press Availablity with the Press Travel Pool, The Prairie Chapel Ranch, Crawford TX, 12/28/01, as reported on official White House site

That ought to mean that he’s jake with the puddybitch and his homies!…and the Donald makes great decisions!…and makes his suits in China!…and wants to tell the Chinese motherfuckers off!…and make gas deals!…just like Shrubbie did.

The puddybitch likes men of action. Not namby-pamby’s like a President who pulls the trigger on a surgical strike to take out Bushie’s “Public Enemy Number One”. Noooooosirrrreeeee. Why Mr. “I’ll git ‘im dead or alive” hardly got through “My Pet Goat” before drowning in his own flop sweat.

This President was cool as the other side of the pillow. Even joked at the Correspondent’s Dinner.

Nope. The puddybitch must have some kind of second sight because all we see in the clowns and losers he touts are…

# 187: Anybody who has to defend himself by saying he has “black friends” is already in trouble with some insensitive or racist comments, and he probably doesn’t realize that his black “friends” (i.e., mere acquantices) barely tolerate his presence.

If you really have black friends who don’t believe you are a racist, then they would be the ones to step up first and defend you. The fact that you are having to make the argument for yourself, in effect, speaks volumes about your relationship with blacks.

Oh, and using the gardner or maid, or asking them to speak on your behalf, pretty much proves that no black person likes you and they only say nice things to you because they need the paycheck.

“i dont know, mike. why not ask chris matthews why he pointed out that all the tea partiers he saw one dat were all white. then you’ll know.”

Gee, thanks for the question manoftruth. Let’s see if I can answer it.

One reason I am not going to ask Chris Matthews the question I asked of Troll is that I don’t watch, read or listen to Matthews. Another is that I have no idea what you are talking about. Yet another is I really don’t give a flying duck about what Matthews thinks about the all white Tea Party crowd he saw “one dat”.

I hope this answers it for you. Thank-you for digging through this 190+ comment thread to find my question to Troll and your rhetorical use of the question back to me with the out from left field reference to Matthews. It really goes to show us what you are capable of when you sit down for a couple of hours and try.

“I am truly not that concerned about him.” – G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden’s whereabouts, 3/13/02

What a tard rujax is… It’s called deflection. If GW Bush wasn’t looking for him why did the 2007 intelligence yield the courier names if he “wasn’t” looking for him? Why were they still looking for them in Pakistan in 2009 when Obama became president?

mot Dearest motherfucking racist piece of shit, Race matters when it’s a fundamental part of a group’s (Teabaggers) ideology and outlook, but not with regard to a group’s spontaneous celebration of an event that has no racial connotations. The distinction is pretty basic, but haters like Troll and you are unlikely to get it.

197. Puddybud, identifying Zitz and FartAss as De Fools Dey Are spews:

“I am truly not that concerned about him.” – G.W. Bush, repsonding to a question about bin Laden’s whereabouts, 3/13/02

What a tard rujax is… It’s called deflection. If GW Bush wasn’t looking for him why did the 2007 intelligence yield the courier names if he “wasn’t” looking for him? Why were they still looking for them in Pakistan in 2009 when Obama became president?

You rujax are really really stupid!

05/02/2011 at 6:16 pm

It’s called being a feckless lazy fratboy, asshole. and he’s YOUR feckless lazy fratboy. The kind that would laugh at you behind your back and call you a racist epiphet. You are really really stupid and terribly naive. You actually think for ONE MINUTE these white “country club” and NRA Republicans give one shit for you and anyone else of your class and race.

And you defend them and parrot their lies like it was your mothers milk nourishing your soul.

The trail that led to bin Laden’s hideout in the town of Abbottabad, about 75 miles north of Islamabad, began between 2002 and 2004 with the CIA’s interrogation of al-Qaeda “high-value targets” at secret CIA sites overseas. Several detainees mentioned the “nom de guerre,” or nickname, of one of bin Laden’s couriers.

Some of the detainees who confirmed the courier’s nickname were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the CIA’s formal name for what is now widely viewed as torture. This adds a moral ambiguity to a story that is otherwise one of triumphal retribution and justice.

“I mean, it’s not just one day you get up, bang, and you got Osama bin Laden,” Cheney said. “It’s the kind of thing where an awful lot of people over a long period of time — thousands have worked this case and these issues and followed on the leads and captured bad guys and interrogated them and so-forth.” – Richard Cheney!

Been sitting here reviewing this thread… Once you get past the mindless rants of the mindless ranters here is the conclusion to the matter…

I applaud Obama for ordering the kill of Osama. But when Obama was a senator and later in 2007 when he started his presidential candidate run he screamed harsh interrogation techniques were not his forte and would end them. Then later as president he attacked the harsh interrogation techniques and made a big stink over the executive order to close Guantanamo Bay.

Butt I distinctly remember all those attacks on Bush and Cheney, other Republicans and many conservatives with speech after speech over harsh interrogation techniques and now he wants to be applauded when he used the evidence and findings of those techniques to find and kill Osama Bin Laden.

Obama used all the evidence from the tactics you leftist pinheads claimed were very wrong. Protest after protest and the slobbering leftist media went along. Obama illegaly invaded Pakistan, ordered a targeted assassination, all from harsh interrogation evidence. These are all the same tactics Obama used to attack Bush and Republicans to become president.

So with Obama’s own words since 2007, your HA leftist arguments against Bush since the start of this blog in 2004, Obama carried out the same illegal actions you all been screaming here about Republicans and conservatives.

I never expect HA leftist pinheads to ever be consistent in their mindless rants especially the fools with three four and five letter monikers.

To lefties only their ends justify any means possible. If a conservative did this you’d be screaming into your goats!

Puddy? If say, president McCain killed Bin Laden, you really think there would be people stepping up to condemn that action? You are more delusional than most of us realize. Fortunately we’ll never know how that scenario would have played out.

I see your boy Mike Rogers was briefed. Suppose he’s still claiming that we’re Mirandizing terrorists? Learn a lesson Pud. There are times when one should STFU rather than put outbursts of complaint into the world unveiling the petulant little child-brain you’re showing to all.

White House deputy national security advisor John Brennan Tuesday knocked down the myth that waterboarding provided crucial intelligence that led to the location of Osama bin Laden.

“So we’ve been talking about the different details and methods that lead up to this moment, and obviously there is word out today that waterboarding played a very big role or role in actually getting the information,” MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski told Brennan. “Is that the case?”

If say, president McCain killed Bin Laden, you really think there would be people stepping up to condemn that action? You are more delusional than most of us realize. Fortunately we’ll never know how that scenario would have played out.

McCain said in a debate with Obama that he wouldn’t go into Pakistan to get bin Laden.

OBAMA said he would and he DID!

Obama KEPT a campaign promise! Another idiot that a certain cretin who pollutes these threads voted for twice couldn’t be bothered to think about bin Laden “all that much”..

Senate Intelligence Chair: Information That Led To Bin Laden’s Killing Did Not Come From TortureBy

Faiz Shakir at 12:02 pm

Bush loyalists have been “irked” over the past 24 hours that they are not getting credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden, arguing that their torture program helped bring about intelligence that led to the mission. Karl Rove said “the tools that President Bush put into place –- GITMO, rendition, enhanced interrogation” led to the successful operation. Similarly, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the mission “rested heavily on some of those controversial policies” from the Bush era.

Today, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) rejected these assertions. She was asked by a reporter whether the intelligence that led to the killing was the result of waterboarding and other harsh treatment of detainees. She responded:

We are in the process of a big study on the detention and interrogation of the detainees on the Intelligence Committee. The Republicans have pulled out of the study. So this has been carried out by the Democratic staff essentially. They have gone through more than 3 million emails, cables, pieces of paper looking for this.

To date, the answer to your question is no. Nothing has been found to indicate this came out of Guantanamo. And people were questioned, but there were no positive answers as to the identity of this number one courier.

Asked a few minutes later whether she considers the Bin Laden killing any kind of “vindication” of the Bush-era torture program, Feinstein said, “Absolutely not. I do not.” She continued, “I happen to know a good deal about how those interrogations were conducted, and in my view, nothing justifies the kind of procedures that were used.”

Naaaaaaaahhhhhhh…DiFi doesn’t knoe anything either…

…naaaahhh it was the feckless frat-boy, yje National Guard deserter, the guy who had OIL COMPANIES go broke in TEXAS (for christ’s sake)…THAT was the guy that “got” Bin Laden?

The trail that led to bin Laden’s hideout in the town of Abbottabad, about 75 miles north of Islamabad, began between 2002 and 2004 with the CIA’s interrogation of al-Qaeda “high-value targets” at secret CIA sites overseas. Several detainees mentioned the “nom de guerre,” or nickname, of one of bin Laden’s couriers.

Some of the detainees who confirmed the courier’s nickname were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the CIA’s formal name for what is now widely viewed as torture. This adds a moral ambiguity to a story that is otherwise one of triumphal retribution and justice.

You fools used left wing sites. I use the AP to deliver the goods. Then I went to the white house briefing. Here it is the white house press briefing…

One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre or his nickname and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11th, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al Qaeda who was captured in 2005.

Now how did this happen leftist fools? A bright spark (none of the fools above) can see from the white house delivered time frame the identification of the courier’s nom de guerre and his real identity took place during the GWBush administration. It happened during the period of enhanced interrogations techniques being conducted using permissive guidance on KSM and al-Libbi.

All you have are left-wing whack off sites where you all go to get your fill of the bitter kook-aid!

From rujax’s horse manure

To date, the answer to your question is no. Nothing has been found to indicate this came out of Guantanamo.

We’ve already established that doing on Wednesday the same thing you did on Monday regardless of what happened on Tuesday isn’t the brightest maneuver. Why don’t you righties get this? It’s like the music theft thing. Righties are always getting busted for using music that’s both left-wing and something they don’t have a license to use. How many thousands of times are they going to make that blunder before they stop?

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboadring that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?”

LEON PANETTA: “Clearly some of it came from detainees and the advanced interrogation of detainees…”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “Are you saying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission.”

LEON PANETTA: “I think some of the detainees, uh, clearly, uh, they used these advanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS: “So finer point, one final time, that includes waterboarding?”

LEON PANETTA: “That is correct.”

There goes the latest exploding HA liberal heads.

See ya morons. This was known Sunday night yet you fools continue to drink the kook-aid of leftist web sites.

We’ve already established that doing on Wednesday the same thing you did on Monday regardless of what happened on Tuesday isn’t the brightest maneuver. Why don’t you lefties get this? It’s like the music theft thing. Lefties are always getting busted for using music that’s left-wing and something they don’t have a license to use. How many thousands of times are they going to make that blunder before they stop?

No, what you’ve first done is change the subject, the Monday-Wednesday comment was directed at Obama’s change in policy. You wanted him to be doing the same thing over and over.

Second, that water-boarding and such hadn’t been used was widely reported, AP, Reuters, shit like that. What you’ve done is brought new information forward. You didn’t do the same thing over and over dispite this new information. You did exactly what you’ve critiqued Obama for doing. Why are you so special that you can do this but the president can not?

Third, I didn’t reject their info, I used it.

Forth, even if water-boarding was used that doesn’t discredit any other form of interrogation. The information could have been gotten in other ways. We didn’t water-board in WWII and we got all sorts of intel from people.

Fifth, you’re link? It’s to a whack-a-mole rightwing site and you accuse me of using “libtard” sites? And I didn’t even provide a site. How would you know?

Sixth, There’s plenty of data that shows water-boarding doesn’t work. My two buddies (Airborne Rangers) that I wrote about the other night that have made a couple of trips to The ‘Stan? They’ve been water-boarded in training exercises and it didn’t work on them.

Seventh, why don’t you go out and make a friend, you spend an awful lot of time on here spouting complete gibberish. It can’t be healthy.

A simple look at the facts will show that, once again, Puddy fails to comprehend or pay attention to the salient points – as a a Bush apologist Puddy is ignoring the actual actions of the worst President in history:

Bush declared in September of 2001 he would find bin Laden and played the 9/11 card frequently – but his words and actions belie his initial statements:

1. By March of 2002, Bush said he did not pay much attention to bin Laden and “was not that concerned with him”.

2. In 2005, Bush shut down the special CIA task force charged with getting bin Laden (One of the first things Obama did was restart the task force – the same task force that led led to the identification of where bin laden actually was).

In recent years, the war in Iraq has stretched the resources of the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon, generating new priorities for American officials. For instance, much of the military’s counterterrorism units, like the Army’s Delta Force, had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.

from the NY times

So instead of hunting bin Laden, Bush was concentrating on Iraq….gee, maybe going into Iraq is the reason it took so long to get bin Laden….Thanks, Bush!

3. In 2006, Bush said bin Laden was “not a top priority use of American resources”.

4. In 2009, the Senate Foreign relations committee issued a report that said that Bush blew the best chance to get bin Laden in 2001 in Torah borah – because Bush was too gutless to send in American troops.

The report “removes any lingering doubts and makes it clear that Osama bin Laden was within our grasp at Tora Bora,” but that decisions made by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputies, and other top administration officials allowed Bin Laden to escape.

The bottom line is that Bush failed to get bin Laden because he considered Iraq to be the top priority. Bush failed to go after the 9/11 al qaida head when we had him trapped and he and his adminstration failed to have the guts to actually get bin Laden when they had him. Bush also disbanded the search for bin Laden and Obama made bin Laden a top priority.

So giving Bush credit for the capture of bin Laden is like giving Hoover credit for fixing the great depression when, in fact, Hoover made all the wrong moves.

You people have your heads up your asses. If if were not for W, and his efforts–which you all wanted him tried for, OBL would still be breathing. Wake up. Panetta made the decision because Obama and Jarrett couldn’t decide what to do which would be most PC, not what is right.

Hello, I just presented a bunch of facts – you not only failed to refute them – you offered a weak opinion of your own and failed to present ANY facts to back up your “opinion”.

As for whether or not you are an idiot – well, present some facts or refute mine – and then we can see. So far, you score a big fat zero on the intelligence scale. In my book, that means you are an idiot (and that is simply a statement of fact).

Prove otherwise and I will revise my opinion.

Oh, and I just want to point out that Obama is Panetta’s boss – so he made the final decision. Just as Bush was Rumsfelds boss..and he made the final decision to NOT go after bin Laden when we should have.

Your arguments are third grade level pap…do you have any facts to dispute what I wrote?

I hear a lot of comments here that sounds as if they come out of the mouths of ardent, hard core people full of hate. I rather sickens me. A man is dead. He was not a good man. He did a lot of evil things during his life. Is this a reason to attack and defame others here?

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